ON ANY GIVEN WORKDAY, at least one Tucker Paving crew usually can be found at a road construction site. The crew could be resurfacing an existing road, widening one, putting in a turning lane, or adding to America’s more than 4 million miles of existing roads.
The statistic about U.S. road miles comes from the American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA), and, to be more precise, it’s more than 4.12 million miles. Those would be center-line miles of roads, not including those paved for the width of just a single vehicle.
Have heard about the ARTBA? The Washington, D.C.-based organization is, according a description on its website (www.arbta.org), “a federation whose primary goal is to aggressively grow and protect transportation infrastructure investment to meet the public and business demand for safe and efficient travel. In support of this mission, ARTBA also provides programs and services designed to give its 7,700 public- and private-sector members a global competitive edge.”
Tucker Paving certainly can support ARTBA’s mission. We’re all for protecting and strengthening America’s public transportation infrastructure and promoting safe and efficient travel throughout the nation — not just here in Central Florida.
The ARTBA website is loaded with statistics about U.S. roads and the nation’s overall transportation infrastructure. We’ve covered one. Here are half a dozen more that might interest you:
1. The state with the most road mileage is Texas, with 313,228 miles. We would’ve guessed California as the leader, but The Golden State actually comes in second with just 174,989 miles of roads. (Florida, by the way, has 121,702 miles of roads.)
2. Texas also leads all states in the number of bridges, with 53,209. Ohio follows with 27,104 bridges.
3. Florida has 121,702 miles of roads, 11,986 bridges, and 512 airports.
4. The principal materials used in highway and bridge construction are asphalt, aggregates, concrete, cement, and steel.
5. According to the Federal Highway Administration, the best road conditions in the USA can be found in Nevada, with Connecticut having the worst roads.
6. According to the 2015 National Bridge Inventory, the state with the best bridges is Minnesota. The bridge conditions are worst in Rhode Island, the inventory reports.